Environmental degradation and economic inequality are two of the defining challenges of the twenty-first century. We synthesize conceptual mechanisms that underpin inequality-environment interlinkages and take stock of the relevant empirical evidence. We propose three channels of interaction,...

The social cost of carbon is the central economic measure for aggregate climate change damages and functions as a metric for optimal carbon prices. Previous literature shows that inequality significantly influences the level of the social cost of carbon, but mostly neglects a major source of...

Preserving environmental quality and addressing economic inequality both feature prominently in public discourse. Neither of these two issues can be fully understood in isolation, and policies aiming at one issue will increasingly have to consider interactions with the other. We synthesize...

The social cost of carbon is the central economic measure for aggregate climate change damages and functions as a metric for optimal carbon prices. Previous literature shows that inequality significantly influences the level of the social cost of carbon, but mostly neglects a major source of...

Preserving environmental quality and addressing economic inequality both feature prominently in public discourse. Neither of these two issues can be fully understood in isolation, and policies aiming at one issue will increasingly have to consider interactions with the other. We synthesize...

Carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere is becoming an important option to achieve net zero climate targets. This paper develops a welfare and public economics perspective on optimal policies for carbon removal and storage in non-permanent sinks like forests, soil, oceans, wood products or...

We analyze how conventional emissions trading schemes (ETS) can be modified by introducing ”clean-up certificates” to allow for a phase of net-negative emissions. Clean-up certificates bundle the permission to emit CO2 with the obligation for its removal. We show that demand for such...

We investigate conditions that aggravate market failures in energy innovations, and suggest optimal policy instruments to address them. Using an intertemporal general equilibrium model we show that 'small' market imperfections may trigger a several decades lasting dominance of an incumbent...

We study the trade-off between equity and growth in the context of tax-financed investment in public capital. Taking into account stylized facts on wealth accumulation, we model agent heterogeneity through differences in saving behavior, income source and time preference. In contrast to the...

Interest rates are central determinants of saving and investment decisions. Costly financial intermediation distort these price signals by creating a spread between the interest rates on deposits and loans with substantial effects on the supply of funds and the demand for credit. This study...